OT- Bob Stoops' coaching tree

Besides wins and losses, I feel that one of the hallmarks of a successful head coach is one whose assistants go onto greater roles with other teams. With the latest hiring of Kevin Wilson at Indiana, this is a bit of a hat tip to Bob Stoops at Oklahoma. Considering he was hired in 1999, this is a pretty impressive string of HC hires from his staff. You can say what you want about some of the characters on this list, but it is still a list.

Mike Leach- HC Texas Tech

Mark Mangino- HC Kansas

Chuck Long- HC San Diego State

Mike Stoops- HC Arizona

Bo Pelini- HC Nebraska (with a short stint with Les, can count this either way)

Kevin Sumlin- HC Houston

Kevin Wilson- HC Indiana

This does not count the list of assistants that went on to become OCs or DCs with other major programs. I have no idea how he keeps reloading with that coaching churn.

I'm not sure if you saw the piece on ESPN Gameday on Saturday, but they linked the Stoops, Pelini, and Tressel back to their days at Youngstown State. In my opinion, this is an amazing fact - that all of these arguably great coaches got their starts at Youngstown State.

While the Stoops and Pelinis grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, none of them have any connection to Youngstown State, at least according to their Wikipedia bios. Regardless, it's still an impressive list of coaches to come out of that city, and Cardinal Mooney High School.

Long is really the only true 100% bust in the group. McCarney had a couple of decent years at ISU, and beat Iowa a few times in the process.

One of the things that gives me pause about RR is the fact that he's been a D1A head coach for 10 years, and I'm not aware of any of his assistants getting a HC gig on their own; I don't really count Opie Stewart in there. Virtually all of the truly top-notch college coaches spawn other coaches; within Bo's first ten years, he had five or six guys go on to HC jobs. Young, Stobart, Maloney, Uzelac, Moeller, and Smith come to mind.

I've always been impressed by Mike Holmgren's 1992 Green Bay staff - some good (and mediocre) future head coaches on that staff: Steve Mariucci, Jon Gruden, Andy Reid, Ray Rhodes,and Dick Jauron all went on to be head coaches. I guess you could always link them all the way back to Bill Walsh as well. Plus the picture is awesome...